Braindead AI?

[Victrix]

Started playing this a week or so ago, and it's a fantastic mod, but I've run into a few situations where the AI doesn't seem to be behaving particularly intelligently

I'm only playing on Noble, but I was under the impression the basic AI was the same at all difficulty levels, only the bonuses for the computer change up or down? Is that not true in FFH?

The specific issue: While playing a lengthy game, I got into a war with an enemy AI and managed to sack several of their cities. While regrouping to continue the push, the AI retaliated with a large army, and their ally brought another large army up - except, instead of attacking my cities (which may have been unwise, so possibly a good choice), it roamed around near my cities and into my 'midfield' without destroying a single improvement or even in a few cases, capturing an adjacent worker.

Had it razed my countryside to the ground, it's highly likely I would have lost the war, but as it never tackled my improvements, workers, or even risked a serious city siege (it did attack a few times, but never with any commitment), I was able to build up and finish killing it off.

Is this normal, are there different AI difficulty levels, a bug, or something else at work I'm unaware of?

It was an unsatsifying victory, to say the least.

 

[kcwong]

From what I understand the AIs get more bonus like in vanilla, but in FFH they have adjusted priorities to use those bonus. e.g. With their much lower support and upgrade costs, they will keep building lots of units all along the game, and upgrade them all into giant stacks of doom.

I don't know about the not-razing improvements. AIs send small groups of units to raze mine all the time, but yes they do like going after workers if you let them.

 

[Emptiness]

The current AI focuses more on defeating your army than on destroying your improvements. Occasionally improvements will be destroyed, but it does not systematically reduce your tiles. The armies the AI sent after you were probably looking for your main army and vulnerable cities. If the AI did not yet have siege weapons then it could get stuck just wandering around, unwilling to attack; once the AI has siege weapons it can turn pretty much any city into a "vulnerable" one, and so isn't likely to be so ineffectual.

The AI's competency improves at higher difficulty levels, not because the AI is different but because the bonuses it receives help compensate for its problems. If you are finding the AI at a particular difficulty setting to be inadequately challenging, increase the difficulty level until the AI can give you a stronger level of opposition.

 

[DaveGold]

The AI will typically attack and capture one city after another and use wounded units to pillage. What may have happened in your game was a consolidation phase where the AI tried to merge units into the main stack, meaning the units did nothing except move about. As an example, the elves will use their world spell to create many treants and then move them to form a stack. The treants expire after 5 turns though so they never do much more than join a stack and expire.

The AI may also have decided the closest city was too well defended and moved to attack a more distant one, typically your capital.

 

[Victrix]

This happened over a period of about 30 turns though, and it wasn't isolated units, it was two giant stacks of doom, from two different AI civs - and neither one pillaged a single improvement or captured a single worker.

One of the two stacks, loaded with commando upgraded assassins and hunters, ran around to my backfield, then retreated, then to the backfield, then retreated, multiple times, each time going over roads, mines, farms, etc, without touching them. The other stack simply squatted next to my most defended city, occasionally retreating.

I'll bump up the difficulty next time, I'm just surprised it wasn't raizing my countryside to the ground is all...

 

[Breunor]

Also remember that hunters and assassins can't pillage.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Victrix]

Ahh, that explains the behavior of the forward army, though not the lack of worker capturing. Not sure why the other army didn't pillage though (lizardmen/axemen iirc)

 

[DaveGold]

Ahh, that explains the behavior of the forward army, though not the lack of worker capturing.

If the AI always captured workers it would either be splitting its stack or chasing decoys instead of capturing cities.

If you were using spells to soften up the enemy stacks the AI can sometimes respond by healing up, or retreating behind their own borders to heal up. If you have entropy mana it reduces the healing of enemies within your borders.

 

[Victrix]

Nope, I wasn't using any spells, or attacking the two army stacks from the two AIs in any way. The assassin/hunter stack just ran around in my (mostly undefended) backlines, doing nothing, then running back to friendly territory. The lizardmen/axemen stack parked itself outside the largest forward city, attacked a few times, and retreated, repeating for some time.

No entropy mana either.

 

[Tasunke]

This is why a good multiplayer game is like 100x better.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

play Wildmana, there's no point in playing vanilla ffh2 anymore.

 

[avalonnn]

An obvious question, but did you build or capture Nox Noctis, the Esus holy city? If so, then all units outside of cities but within your borders, including those workers, would be invisible. In fact, an enemy stack could end its turn _on_ your inivisible worker without capturing it.


My only weird exprience with the AI (playing on Warlord) is that it sends out Infernal heroes solo, so I get to kill Hyborem (twice) and the AV heroes (in one game) before meeting the Infernal Stack.

 

[Victrix]

Nope, didn't have that

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

play Wildmana, there's no point in playing vanilla ffh2 anymore.

Not sure I agree with that. While I love Wildmana, the base FFH2 mod is a much more finished product. There are far less performance issues playing vanilla.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

umh, I'll have to try it again and compare I guess. indeed with some big changes coming in WM 9 they're gonna be different enough to give good reasons to play both.

 

[Deon]

Ahh, that explains the behavior of the forward army, though not the lack of worker capturing. Not sure why the other army didn't pillage though (lizardmen/axemen iirc)

Lizardmen are hunters, so they can't pillage.
Axemen have priority to attack cities, so they probably didn't have UNITAI_PILLAGE set on their stack, but they couldn't attack your city because of the defenders so they moved around.

Did they have any horsemen? These do a good pillaging work.

 

[travathian]

Started playing this a week or so ago, and it's a fantastic mod, but I've run into a few situations where the AI doesn't seem to be behaving particularly intelligently

Play a few more games, you'll find it down right ******** most of the time. Everyone in this thread can try and find the reason, but it comes down to the AI just bein plain dumb. The base AI in Civ4 is dumb, and FFH is even more complicated to deal with.